Sat, Jun 03, 2006

If the Christian truly follows the Christ of the Bible and wants to impact this planet positively, then he will spend significant and intentional time away from his church buddies and in the company of people who are fundamentally not of his stripe.

Mr. Sulzberger, having read all those other commencement speeches, said: "Ninety-five percent of them come down to this: 'Today you enter the real world. Follow your heart. Find what you love and do it.' Who can argue with such wisdom? It's sort of a motherhood and apple pie statement." There are two difficulties with that generality.

The cult of the bear still reigns supreme in most corners of Wall Street and the mainstream media, as those who want to tear down the economy continue to manufacture justifications for their declinist American views.

In real life, what the Mafia does is not exactly funny. But in the hands of Hollywood and its cultural cliques, violent crime can not only be funny but lovable. HBO's "The Sopranos" is Exhibit A. It's been such a sensation that it's created a kind of mobster chic.

At least Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean is colorful; you've got to give him that much. But he's not the guy to be leading the charge to reunite the Democratic Party with so-called "values voters."

No one yet knows what happened in Haditha, Iraq, last November. There are accounts -- unconfirmed -- of a massacre perpetrated by a unit of enraged Marines against unarmed civilians. Unless I miss my guess, this is about to become the biggest story in the world.

This city and its environs used to be a GOP stronghold -- an island of Republican power in the midst of a rapidly changing, Democrat-controlled state. That's no longer the case. And what is happening here in Southern California is, in many ways, a reflection of what's happening across the nation.

My candidate for Senate, KT McFarland, was a late-comer into the race. In fact, she only got into the Senate race 10 weeks ago. Her opponent, former mayor of Yonkers John Spencer had been running hard for much longer and was the presumptive candidate.

My candidate for Senate, KT McFarland, was a late-comer into the race. In fact, she only got into the Senate race 10 weeks ago. Her opponent, former mayor of Yonkers John Spencer had been running hard for much longer and was the presumptive candidate.

Americans have turned darkly pessimistic about their nation, a mood fed by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; $3-a-gallon gas; anxiety about the economy; a jittery stock market; and an overall belief that not much is getting done in Washington these days.

I used to think The Koran was the best book to read in the airport, simply because carrying it guarantees you'll never get searched by airport security. Later, I decided that The Book of Mormon was better because it guarantees the person sitting next to you will never start a conversation during the flight. Now, I've decided – once and for all, I think – that The Da Vinci Code has both of them topped.

The New York Times of May 21 featured estimates of how much revenue the federal government is losing as a result of tax cuts, more than $50 billion over a five-year period. Meanwhile, a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal reported the government as receiving "a surge in unanticipated revenue coming from the rich."

Like the preacher's kid, she obviously loves and admires her father, but on one memorable campaign occasion she had to stand as a surrogate for her father, to take abuse from his critics and enemies, most of them more lethal than a bratty child.

As members of the House and Senate head for a conference to try to reconcile the stark and probably irreconcilable differences incorporated in their two immigration bills, Republicans are between a rock and a hard place. And another rock. And another.

It is hard to find positive attributes in a proposition imposing a new tax on oil produced in California that will go before the state's voters in November. Yet, Phil Angelides, his long political career at stake in next Tuesday's Democratic primary for governor, chose last week to endorse this dubious measure.

Can Christians run an adoption agency, based on a Christian vision of marriage and the family? Not in the state of Massachusetts. That's the message from an extraordinary incident that took place in March in Boston.

One man who can be counted on to give a candid assessment of the Democrats' prospects is Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff for President Clinton, who is now one of his party's top political advisers and respected elder statesmen.

Despite increasingly unconvincing denials, Iran seems determined to proceed with the construction of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them far and wide in the Middle East and western Europe.

Wed, May 31, 2006

So in addition to the Two Years Tax-Free plan for illegals, they get one free felony. Also, illegal immigrants from Mexico qualify for affirmative action, allowing them to get into U.S. colleges with lower grades and scores than Americans. What's the process for losing your citizenship and becoming an illegal alien?

Green isn’t what it used to be. It was once just the color of the trees and grass that the environmental movement tried to protect. But now it is also the color of the three dollar bills Americans must suddenly pay for a gallon of gas.

Conservatives who point out the declining audience for the big television network newscasts, and declining public trust of the media in general, often underestimate how much clout the liberal media still have.

The prevailing mentality among Beltway Republicans is that passage of an imperfect immigration bill before the November elections is better than no bill at all. They might just find out how wrong they are when they experience the inevitable conservative backlash.

What is going on with Republicans in Congress? They've largely abandoned many traditional conservative principles -- smaller government, belief in the free market and protection of individual, not group, rights.

Confronted by a president who asserts the prerogative to ignore the will of Congress whenever he thinks national security requires it, our brave representatives in Washington are squabbling over who gets to watch when the FBI thumbs through their corrupt colleagues' calendars.

Like its predecessors, the third installment of the X-Men franchise is landing on all kinds of box office record lists. But does the bona fide blockbuster really merit the impressive grosses it has already raked in? That depends on how much you expect in return for your summer entertainment dollar.

As the Senate was considering the immigration bill, which may go nowhere, the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission was holding its initial meeting, in the shadow of the Capitol at the main Department of Transportation Building.

The broad shoulders of a national election loom just ahead. It is traditional to deplore elections as distracting from courses charted by celestial coordinates. Sure; OK; much of this is true. But elections also ratify, or fail to do so, politicians who have set forth national policy.

The war now being waged in Congress over illegal immigration is mostly about which philosophy will prevail in the Republican Party. Will it be the conservative wing that brought the GOP to power after years of wandering in the political wilderness as a minority party, or will it be the moderate-liberal wing that became comfortable in the wilderness?

The recent death of former Senator and Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen brought forth many laudatory obituaries. Most concentrated on his long career in Texas politics and chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee. But for my money, the most important thing he ever did was during his chairmanship of the Joint Economic Committee (JEC).

When a politician speaks, there are two things he will invariably lie about. The first is that he wants to get money out of the election process. What he really wants is to get money out of his opponent's election process.

Imagine someone saying that he seeks the destruction of Italy because he regards Italian national identity as racist. Further, imagine that this person constantly denies being anti-Italian, because he does not hate all Italians, only Italy and all those who believe Italy should exist.

The California State Senate recently passed the "Bias-Free Curriculum Act," requiring textbooks in California to include the contributions of gays and lesbians. While Governor Schwarzenneger has said he will veto the bill, it is worth examining the justifications its sponsors offer, because the arguments will be back.

If you have company stock sitting in your 401(k) account, you'll have to tackle more complicated choices when leaving your job than the folks who are only ushering plain old vanilla mutual funds out of the building.

Memorial Day was first called Decoration Day, when the women of Columbus, Miss., decorated the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers, many of whom had been killed at nearby Shiloh Church in the first great blood-letting of our Civil War.

As President Bush's poll numbers drop dramatically even among his base, the question most frequently asked by angry Republicans is: Why, oh why, is Bush so stubbornly rejecting the advice of his supporters even though that advice is consistent with the thunderous message from public opinion surveys?

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s wars. Established in the 1860s during the American Civil War, Memorial Day tapped into the general human need to honor our dead who had contributed honorably to this great country.

Richmond Myrick, the principal of Largo High School, is a registered Democrat in overwhelmingly Democratic Prince George's County next to Washington, D.C. He has not been active politically and is not recorded as having made any contributions to candidates for federal office.

As I write this, Congress is well on its way toward passing one of the most important pieces of legislation of the 21st century. The timing is perfect: America has never needed immigration reform as desperately as it does now. To build on what I wrote last week, this is certainly no time for our leaders to suffer from a failure of nerve.

Arlington National Cemetery, on Memorial Day, has everything to do with a single white headstone nestled in a neat row among all the other white headstones next to it, in front of it, and behind it. Up hills and down swales.

Sun, May 28, 2006

Enron's Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are about to trade their corporate suites for prison cells. Sometimes the system works. As prosecutors argued and jurors apparently agreed, Enron collapsed not because of bad press or market forces beyond executives' control, but because of criminal choices and "outright lies."

It's not difficult to spend someone else's money. Here's a sample from one of President Bush’s recent speeches: "I'm calling on Congress to provide funding for dramatic improvements in manpower and technology at the border," he announced on May 15. And, "since I became president, we've increased funding for border security by 66 percent."

John McCain's undeclared but ubiquitous presidential campaign will produce a delicious moment when he announces, as he surely will, that he will not participate in the public funding system for presidential primaries.